Chinatown Los Angeles

Like the kay snake still sold as an analgesic in herbal medicine stores along North Spring Street, Los Angeles' Chinatown is shedding its old skin. What is emerging is a colorful new organism--a revitalized community that not only has experienced the pull of two cultures--the ancient Chinese and the new American--but has absorbed the shock waves of social and economic change brought about by global politics.

It's the cake that has fueled hundreds of thousands of birthdays, weddings and office parties across Los Angeles. You've probably had it: two layers of soft yellow sponge cake that sandwich a filling of fresh strawberries and fluffy whipped cream, frosted all over with yet more whipped cream, ringed with toasted almonds on the sides and decorated with red, blue or pink roses on top. It might have said, "Thank you for all your hard work," "Congratulations,...

It's the cake that has fueled hundreds of thousands of birthdays, weddings and office parties across Los Angeles. You've probably had it: two layers of soft yellow sponge cake that sandwich a filling of fresh strawberries and fluffy whipped cream, frosted all over with yet more whipped cream, ringed with toasted almonds on the sides and decorated with red, blue or pink roses on top. It might have said, "Thank you for all your hard work," "Congratulations,...

Beyond their kitschy, noisy facades, American Chinatowns are more than a place to find a counterfeit Kate Spade bag, cheap dim sum and tacky souvenirs. For hundreds of thousands of people, Chinatown is home. In "American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods," author Bonnie Tsui immerses herself in some of these communities, exploring their class struggles, rivalries, customs and dialects. "What was most surprising to learn was how little things have changed," she said by phone, "because it's still where new working-class immigrants go because they don't have anywhere else to go. That's a small comfort when you're making your way in a completely unfamiliar place."

THEY were an underground hit almost from the start. The cut-rate transportation services called "Chinatown buses" originated about a decade ago in the Northeast. At first, they were an inexpensive way for Chinese restaurant workers to commute to jobs in nearby cities. Fares as low as $10 between New York and Boston were common. Soon Chinese students began to hop aboard, and other students followed suit. Then savvy budget travelers noticed, and suddenly Greyhound was facing a new form of competition: low-overhead bus companies that thrived on a no-frills, shoestring approach to service.

A stroll through Chinatown in Los Angeles shows that it's easy to find ivory for sale that arrived in the U.S. before the 1989 international ban, and therefore is legal to buy. Ivory goods in Chinatown include carvings, letter openers, jewelry and art, from $19.95 earrings on up to ornate statues priced at $3,000. Many stores have showcases or counters filled with ivory, though its popularity is hard to peg.

Financial woes have derailed the development of Chinatown Blossom Plaza, a long-awaited $162-million apartment and retail complex set to rise on the former site of one of Los Angeles' most beloved downtown eateries. The developer of the project, which was to replace the shuttered Little Joe's restaurant in Chinatown, on Thursday filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to prevent its lender from foreclosing on the property at Broadway and College Street.

Angela Chao Roberson, 22, knew she did not exactly look Chinese, with her cocoa-colored skin, her bushels of curly hair and her curvy figure. But she had no doubt she belonged in the same room with 17 other young women vying for the title Miss Los Angeles Chinatown. Sure, she ate soul food when her father's African American relatives came to visit her family in Victorville, but her family was much more likely to eat rice and stir-fried tilapia with garlic and soy sauce.

IT WAS 6:30 ON A FRIDAY NIGHT, AND TWO TABLES of young Asian men were slurping up $50 worth of steaming pho , Vietnamese noodle soup, at a popular Chinatown eatery. But when the checks were delivered, both tables refused to pay. Instead, two of the young men signed "Iron Dragon" on the check, followed by a pager number. And they informed the owner that they would return the next day to collect $3,000 from him and expected monthly payments of $700 thereafter.

The basics Tucked below Dodger Stadium and in the shadow of Los Angeles City Hall, Chinatown has endured an exodus of residents to the San Gabriel Valley over the last two decades but remains the symbolic heart of the Chinese community. The close-knit neighborhood still attracts immigrants from Southeast Asia, but it also is home to an aging generation. An estimated 15,000 people live in tightly packed complexes north and west of the commercial area.

Financial woes have derailed the development of Chinatown Blossom Plaza, a long-awaited $162-million apartment and retail complex set to rise on the former site of one of Los Angeles' most beloved downtown eateries. The developer of the project, which was to replace the shuttered Little Joe's restaurant in Chinatown, on Thursday filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code to prevent its lender from foreclosing on the property at Broadway and College Street.

There were too many cooks in the narrow kitchen aisle in Chinatown's Grand Star Jazz Club on Saturday, but they cheerily squeezed past one another to peer into the braising pot where chunks of pork shoulder simmered in a piquant sauce of red wine, rice wine, garlic, scallions and ginger. In front of an industrial-size wok, Jet Tila, a restaurant consultant and radio and television chef, demonstrated how to steam whole striped bass.

It is a classic art-world story: A small band of young, hip, energetic dealers descends upon a forgotten corner of the city in search of reasonable real estate. They slip in between Chinese restaurants with pictures of lobsters propped up in the windows and dusty souvenir shops 10 years past their prime, refitting crumbling interiors with gleaming white walls and making uneasy peace with wary shopkeepers.

To step into the Gin Herb store -- or Wing On Tong, as it is known to its Cantonese-speaking patrons -- is to enter both another country and another century. Behind a long counter fronting a wall of wooden drawers, fourth-generation herbalists in the family-owned store measure and mix leaves and roots, mushrooms and minerals, perfuming the air with the aroma of musty ginseng and sweet licorice.

THEY were an underground hit almost from the start. The cut-rate transportation services called "Chinatown buses" originated about a decade ago in the Northeast. At first, they were an inexpensive way for Chinese restaurant workers to commute to jobs in nearby cities. Fares as low as $10 between New York and Boston were common. Soon Chinese students began to hop aboard, and other students followed suit. Then savvy budget travelers noticed, and suddenly Greyhound was facing a new form of competition: low-overhead bus companies that thrived on a no-frills, shoestring approach to service.

In 1870, Chinatown was a block-long portion of a raucous part of downtown L.A. known as Calle de Los Negros. Many inhabitants were laundrymen, gardeners, road builders and ranch hands. On Oct. 24, 1871, a Caucasian mob shocked the nation when it massacred nearly two dozen Chinese. But Chinatown survived, and thrived. By 1910, the population exceeded 3,000; the neighborhood had an opera house, three temples and a newspaper.

For a limited time only, Metro Rail is offering scholars an opportunity for some time travel. Archeologists are watching to see what buried artifacts subway builders may uncover as they dig holes for stations and access shafts for tunnels. Already, some bottles and ceramic pieces from the turn of the century have turned up in shallow trenches. Paleontologists have been assigned to watch for fossils.

Red-and-blue Taiwanese flags were still fluttering in the most prominent places in Chinatown on Sunday, but a crowd of people loyal to the People's Republic of China raised split-finger victory signs as their one red-and-gold flag found a home on a small lane. "I feel real proud," said David Lee, 85, who owns the office building on Bamboo Lane where the flag now flies. "We're doing it nicely, quietly. We'll be in the center [of Chinatown], in time."

The last time Don Pugh, 47, stood in what is now the state's newest park, he was a teenager dodging trains and frolicking on the tracks. On Saturday, Pugh returned with his family to the former rail yard as local and state officials opened the Los Angeles State Historic Park, an 18-acre patch of spongy grass adjacent to Chinatown. About 300 people turned out for the event at the Cornfield, a site earlier envisioned for industrial uses.

Design firms in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York have been named finalists in an unusual competition to develop a new state park at a former rail yard near downtown L.A. Mia Lehrer and Associates of Los Angeles, Hargreaves and Associates of San Francisco and Field Operations of New York beat out 30 other design teams in the first phase of the contest, state parks administrators said Thursday.